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Welcome to the web site based on the dissertation by Martin Mannion and Clem Nihill.

We are both students of The Smurfit School of Business in UCD studying for a Masters Degree in Management Science. The dissertation is an investigation using Multi Criteria Decision Making methods into the assessment of research workloads of academics. It is a continuation of a project completed last year which investigated the workload of academics involved in teaching. Load-balancing of the work of academics: teaching, research, running courses, serving the community and more, is a matter of great importance and sensitivity to academics because of its implications for promotion, financial support for conference attendance and research, teaching loads, etc. We have been developing a criteria tree which seperates the many activities of the research of academics into initially three different areas being Technical, Contextual and Situational. These areas correspond to the theory of Nomology and the advice of our project supervisor. Using these three areas the activities can be easily distributed into a tree which will be used to then score and weight the inputs academics put into the area of research. We have published this tree online in order to get the valuable opinions of those academics themselves who are involved in such work. We hope that by gaining feedback on the topic we can increase the quality and accuracy of the model. The tree is accessible here or by clicking on the link on the left-hand side. To get the background knowledge and theory please click on the links opposite. We really do appreciate the opinions of any academics that are familiar with this area of assessment of the workloads and would also value and opinions expressed on the method by which output of research is rewarded also. The tree we have developed is there to aid academics in gaining maximum productivity from their energies in research. Essentially it is a measure of inputs. We would also be interested to hear academics opinions on the methods by which outputs are measured and rewarded. Does the system in your institution work well in your opinion? If not, why not? Does the way in Irish research institutions evaluate their research compare favorably with the methods from other countries?

It is vitally important that we get as much feedback from academics as possible as it is this discussion that will enrich the quality of the model we wish to develop. Thanks. Martin Mannion & Clem Nihill